The Woodlands girls soccer team will play in its fourth consecutive Region II-5A tournament today, but the Lady Highlanders are not the favorites they were last year.

“If they were going to rank the four teams, I’d say we’d be fourth,” The Woodlands coach Dina Graves said.

Graves — who has led her team to back-to-back state championship game appearances, including last year’s 3-2 victory over McKinney Boyd — wasn’t being modest. She wasn’t trying to rile up her team for motivation, either.

The three other teams that advanced to the regional tournament are more experienced than even the defending state champs.

The Lady Highlanders (19-1-7) play Garland Sachse (22-3-1) in the semifinals at 1 p.m. today at the Kelly Reeves Athletic Complex in Austin. Sachse has made a postseason trek this far only once before, in 2006, when the Lady Mustangs beat The Woodlands 2-1 in a shootout in the regional semis.

In last year’s playoffs, the Lady Highlanders beat both teams on the other side of this weekend’s regional tournament bracket, Round Rock Westwood in the Region II-5A final and then Boyd for the state title.

Westwood (21-4-1), which beat The Woodlands’ District 14-5A rival and league champion Kingwood 1-0 in the regional quarterfinals on Tuesday, will play Boyd (24-1-1) at 11 a.m. today in the other semifinal match.

“Both of those teams have almost their entire teams returning (from last year),” Graves said. “And I’ve been told Sachse has almost its entire team returning. So, we’re going to be the new kids on the block, relatively speaking.”

Relatively speaking.

The Lady Highlanders match Boyd with only one loss this season, 1-0 at Kingwood in February during 14-5A play. But it was their first setback in 43 matches; The Woodlands had last lost to Cinco Ranch 2-1 in January 2010.

The sky fell further — or seemed to — when Oak Ridge, which finished last in the seven-team 14-5A, earned a 0-0 draw with the defending state champs three weeks later.

But the Lady Highlanders had eight days off before their next game — a rematch against Kingwood — and held leads of 1-0 and 2-1 before settling for a 2-2 draw.

The Woodlands closed the season with a 5-1 win at College Park and an 8-0 thumping of Conroe on Senior Night.

“I think the whole season we’ve been building,” Graves said. “We always knew we could click. … Once we hit the beginning of March, things just kept looking better and better.”

The Lady Highlanders cruised in the bi-district playoffs, a 5-0 win at Tomball, and then beat Austin Bowie in the area round 3-1 before a last-minute, 1-0 victory over Klein Oak in the regional quarterfinals earlier this week.

“Once we won on Tuesday, it was an exciting couple of days,” Graves said.

And now The Woodlands is back at the regional tournament.

Senior captains Natalie Kintigh, Kelsey Langham, Hannah Stanifer and Claire Watson and juniors Lexi Ricketts, Emily Taylor and Lauren Watson proved to be a driving force since the day after last year’s state championship.

“Their experience leading this group has been tremendous,” said Graves, who also noted the play of a dozen more sophomores and juniors. “There’s nothing you can do to prepare for that role. We started preparing for this last April. They personally have taken an interest in making sure that could happen.

“And the younger players have been awesome. We wouldn’t be here without them.”

Last season, the Lady Highlanders beat Westwood 2-1 to advance to their second consecutive state tournament, where they beat Bowie 1-0 in the semis before toppling Boyd.

Standing in the way of a third straight state tournament are Sachse and, with a win today, either Boyd or Westwood.

Boyd won District 10-5A this season with a 14-0 record. Sachse finished second at 12-2, losing to Boyd 5-0 and 2-1. Westwood hasn’t lost since the first week of February.

The pressure’s on — but not The Woodlands.

“I don’t think we’ve put any pressure on ourselves,” Graves said. “I think I was the most nervous last year at regionals because everybody expected us to get back to state since I was returning practically my whole team.

“We’ve played relaxed. I think that, no, we haven’t felt pressure at all.”

And now, in a strange reversal, the Lady Highlanders seem to have the odds stacked against them. But their motto this season has been “Impossible is Nothing.”

“Of course, nobody expected us to have opportunities to get back to where we are,” Graves said.